After a long time working on other projects, I’m happy to be getting back into my research on early modern families and crime. The university approved my work-study application so that, starting this fall, I’ll have a student working with me to analyze Old Bailey sexual offence reports exploring how family members were invoked and involved. This should be rewarding for both of us – I’m hoping we can aim for some publishable results at the end, as co-authors. This project should also help me to focus my research and writing time on revising another family & crime history article that’s been sitting on the back burner for several years now.

Right now my focus is on preparing the way for our study – putting together the bibliographic framework, assessing how the rise of self-censorship within The Proceedings will affect the scope and analysis, etc. I don’t want to overwhelm the student or myself. The dangerous thing with a wide-open research scope is the being buried in too much material. So we’ll start small and see how far we go. Still, it’s pretty exciting. Being on faculty at a regional university means that I’m used to being the only one working on X, Y or Z. Even my graduate students have tended to work far afield from my own research subjects but this work study project will hopefully employ a student who’s equally interested in the material and aspects of the topic so we both can profit by the connection!